Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Introduction
The objective in this tutorial is to record a simple narration, add some background music, cut the narration to fit the music, lower the volume of the music during the narration, and finally mix and export the final product. Give yourself and hour or so to complete this tutorial. On your first attempt:
q
You are learning and experimenting, exploring the many tools Audacity offers you. Don't expect to get it perfect the first time. It really doesn't matter what your narration is about, and whether you read it or ad lib. It also doesn't matter what the music is, but an instrumental track is preferable. Save your work often!
mouth. While you are talking, try to keep looking in one direction - moving your head left or right, up or down, while you're talking will change the tonal quality of your voice, and may be distracting to your listeners. Speak in a normal, conversational tone of voice, but also speak clearly and enunciate carefully. Your listeners can't see you so don't have the visual cues they would have if your were speaking to them in person. So let us begin ... Start Audacity: a new untitled project window opens. Click on File > Save Project As... and name your project. You are now ready to record the narration. Don't worry about mistakes, pauses, coughs etc. - we can edit those out later. In fact you may want to make a few deliberate mistakes so you can practice editing them out later. When you stop to make a correction, go back to the start of a natural break - sentence or phrase - and start again in a normal voice: once you've tried to edit out your mistakes you will realize the importance of this. Click on the Record button in the Transport Toolbar. Record your narration.
As you can see, the portion to be removed is selected. Press the C key to hear two seconds of audio before, and one second of audio after the selection - this lets you hear what it will sound like after the selection is deleted. This is called "Cut Preview". Adjust the length of the selection until the edit sounds natural. Various ways to adjust a selection were discussed in the Editing an Existing File tutorial. When you are happy with the selection, press the <delete> key, click on Edit > Remove Audio > Delete or press CTRL + K to delete the selection. If you want to hear more than two seconds before or one second after the selection click on Edit > Preferences (on Mac it's Audacity > Preferences), click on the Playback tab, and in the Cut Preview section set the "Preview Before Cut Region" and "Preview After Cut Region" times to your liking. Continue in this manner correcting the mistakes until you are satisfied with the end result. Save your work.
The Compressor effect works by making the loud parts quieter, then amplifying everything, which ends up making the quiet parts louder. First we'll go to the bottom of the dialog and check "Make-up gain for 0dB after compressing" and "Compress based on Peaks". The former means that Compressor will maximize the volume of the track after it does its work. The latter means that Compressor will look at the peaks of the waveform rather than its average value. The "Threshold" control is the "tipping point" - the point where Compressor decides if something is "loud" (and should be made quieter) or "quiet" (in which case it leaves it alone). For our first pass we'll set "Threshold" to "-12 dB". The "Noise Floor" control tells Compressor that anything below that level is noise and it shouldn't make it any louder: for now we'll set that control to "-80 dB". The "Ratio" control tells Compressor how much quieter it should make the loud parts - set it to "6:1". Finally, set the "Attack Time" to "0.5 secs" and the "Decay Time" to "1.0 secs" - these two controls tell Compressor how fast it should respond to changes in volume. Click the "OK" button and let Compressor do its work. Listen back to the result. Are the quiet parts still too quiet? Undo and try again with a Threshold setting of -18 dB. Does you voice sound unnaturally squashed? Undo and try again with a Threshold setting of -6 dB. Note that once we've gone through setting everything up the first time, on subsequent tries we just change the Threshold. This make it easy to home in on the setting that works. When you have your narration edited to your liking, be sure to save your project. Now it's time to add the music.
Look at the Track Control Panel at the left of each track. Note the "Mute" and "Solo" buttons. You can use these to control which tracks you hear when you click the Play button. Clicking the "Mute" button will turn that track off - it will not be included in the mix when you press the Play button. Clicking the "Solo" button will cause only that track to be heard when you press the Play button. The exact behavior of the Solo button can be set in the Tracks Preferences panel.
The Audacity Tracks and Clips page describes how to use the Time Shift Tool to slide clips around.
Marking the places in the background music track where you want the narration clips to start
Remember, our goal is to cut the narration to fit the music. So our next step is to pick the spots in the background music track where we want the three narration clips to start Click the "Solo" button on the narration track to turn off the Solo function on that track. Click the "Solo" button on the background music track so you will only hear that track. Identify the point in the background music track where you want the narration to begin. Click at that point with the Selection Tool. Click on Tracks > Add Label at Selection. Type a name for the label, for example "First Narration".
file:///C|/Archivos de programa/Audacity/help/manual/man/tutorial_mixing_a_narration_with_background_music.html (5 de 13)18/08/2012 5:36:04
Similarly, identify the points in the background music track where you want the second and third narration clips to begin, and create labels at those points. Your project window should look something like this:
up perfectly - when the start of the clip lines up with the third label a yellow "snap line" will light up. Similarly, drag the second narration clip to line up with the second label, and drag the first narration clip to line up with the first label. Your project window should now look something like this:
before the first narration clip begins. Click to create a second control point just as the narration starts. Drag the second control point down to reduce the volume of the music track. Click in the Timeline a few seconds before the start of the first narration clip to hear the effect. Press the spacebar to stop playback. Adjust the first and second control points to get the length and depth of the fade you want. In a similar manner create the fade up at the end of the first narration clip.
file:///C|/Archivos de programa/Audacity/help/manual/man/tutorial_mixing_a_narration_with_background_music.html (7 de 13)18/08/2012 5:36:04
You could continue in this manner doing the fades on the music track for each clip in the narration track. Or you could try using the Auto Duck effect. The advantage of using the Envelope tool is that you can always go back and change the fades. Auto Duck, being an effect, permanently alters the music track.
With the music track above the narration track, select a portion of the music track that overlaps one of the narration clips, with two or three seconds extra on each side. Click on Effect > Auto Duck. For now, accept the default parameters (-12 dB, 1 second, 0.5 seconds, 0.5 seconds, 0 seconds, 0 seconds, -30 dB) and click the "OK" button. After the effect completes, listen to the result. If you don't like it, click on Edit > Undo. Bring up the Auto Duck dialog again and change the parameters. Continue trying different parameters until you get a result you like. When you have settings for the Auto Duck effect that you like, click on Edit > Undo one more time. Then click on the Track Control Panel of the music track to select the entire track. Click on Effect > Auto Duck one last time. Click the "OK" button to apply the Auto Duck effect to the entire music track.
Note the difference between this and the use of Envelopes: Auto Duck has altered the music track, and the effect is permanent.
you want it to take to fade out. Using the Selection Tool, click in the music track at the point where you want the music to be completely faded out. Click on Edit > Select > Cursor to Track End. Press the delete key. Click at the point where you want the music to begin fading out. Click on Edit > Select > Cursor to Track End. Click on Effect > Fade Out.
longer than your actual production, look for the unwanted bits of audio and delete them. You may need to click just past the real end of your narration/music and delete everything from there to the end of the track(s). Audacity can export in a variety of formats. The two most commonly used are MP3 (for podcasts, etc.) and WAV (for burning to CD). Note that in order to export to MP3 format you must first install the optional LAME MP3 encoder: instructions are [here].
Mix and Render only mixes the selected tracks - you want to mix all of them
your project is mixed into a new stereo track and the previous, separate tracks are deleted
The Show Clipping command will put red vertical bars anywhere clipping has occurred in your track. If any red bars appear, click on Edit > Undo Mix and Render and go back to Step 7.
Click in the Track Control Panel of the newly-created track Click on Effect > Amplify
r
accept the default values and click the OK button. the volume of your final mix is maximized.
You exported a project in a previous tutorial. If you need a refresher on how the File > Export command works, that information is here. Congratulations, your narration over background music is now ready to share with the world.
Using the Time Shift Tool: Audacity Tracks and Clips Using the Envelope Tool: Envelope Tool Using Labels: Label Tracks The Compressor effect: Compressor The Auto Duck effect: Auto Duck The Mix and Render command: Tracks > Mix and Render
Navigation
q
Help Location
q